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February 4th, 2013 - Cindy Colson Dulwich Beijing The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green TIME Magazine's #1 Fiction Book of 2012! “The Fault in Our Starsis a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it's also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness." —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.
February 4th, 2013 - Cindy Colson Dulwich Beijing Bumped, by Megan Cafferty:
In 2036 New Jersey, when teens are expected to become fanatically religious wives and mothers or high-priced Surrogettes for couples made infertile by a widespread virus, sixteen-year-old identical twins Melody and Harmony find in one another the courage to believe they have choices.
Booklist (May 15, 2011 (Vol. 107, No. 18))
Grades 9-12. After an inexplicable virus renders anyone 18 years and older infertile, “bumping,” the practice of arranging pregnancies with teen surrogates, becomes a big business. Sixteen-year-olds Melody and Harmony, identical twins separated at birth, couldn’t be more different from each other. Melody has one of the most talked about bumping contracts, but she is reluctant to fulfill it, even when her bumping agent arranges for a notoriously hot stud to impregnate her. Harmony, raised in the super-religious community of Goodside, is dead set on preventing Melody from “bumping” for profit, but she is also wrestling with conflicting thoughts about faith, love, and marriage. Like Julia Karr’s XVI (2011), Bumped has plenty to say about reproductive rights and girls’ place in society, but McCafferty’s touch is a bit lighter. McCafferty sometimes dodges terrifying truths, such as the implications of teens who sell their babies on an auction block, but she will likely develop these ethical and moral dilemmas in the planned sequel.
February 4th, 2013 - Cindy Colson Dulwich Beijing BZRK, by Michael Grant
Grades 9-12. Grant, who showed a flair for grandiose conceptual gambits in his Gone series, here goes big by going small. With science as soft as pudding (though, really, who cares—pudding is delicious), he envisions nanotechnology so advanced that brains can be rewired, memories manipulated, and senses hacked by robots and gene-spliced creatures the size of dust mites. A war between two ultra-secretive, competing ideologies—one championing free will, the other promising enforced happiness—is being fought “down in the meat,” and Grant gleefully exposes the biological ickiness of the body going about its everyday business in paranoia-inducing scenes of nanobots scuttling across spongy brain matter or plunging probes into optic nerves. At the same time, he doles out eviscerating loads of violence on the macro level as two teens are enlisted to help stop a maniacal baddie and his team of “twitchers,” who are planning to infiltrate the heads of the world’s most powerful nations. With simmering pots of sexual tension, near-nonstop action, and the threat of howling madness or brain-melting doom around every corpuscular corner, Grant’s new series is off to a breathless, bombastic start. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Grant’s Gone novels have catapulted him into best-sellerdom, but he’s also one of the savvier explorers of multiplatform attention grabs. An elaborate assault of mobile gaming apps, tangential online stories and comics, and an array of other interactive content all extend his reach.
1/24/2013- Karen G., ISB
A confusion of princes.
Booklist (February 15, 2012 (Vol. 108, No. 12))
Grades 8-11. There’s always the possibility for any prince to be chosen as emperor, but, in a vast empire of ten million biologically and mechanically augmented princes, Khemri discovers that—assassination attempts and imperial interference aside—life as a prince isn’t what he’d been led to believe. While on a secret mission to hone his skills and expand his knowledge, he meets Raine, a young woman who changes his perspective and, as a result, Khemri begins trying to fulfill his true potential. Aurealis Award–winning author Nix develops an empire conceptually reminiscent of the sf classic Dune (1965), with an emphasis on house loyalty and political machinations. He keeps the details fresh through use of sf tropes, employing them to explore big-picture issues like morality and ethics under the guise of a rousing space opera. Khemri’s first-person point of view, along with a fast-paced, action- and plot-driven story, is sure to appeal to fans of the Star Wars universe and any number of first-person shooter video games. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The latest from New York Times best-selling Nix is pubbing to some serious fanfare. Expect an author blog tour, a targeted Facebook ad campaign, a collectible poster, and more. January 24, 2013 Dominique LFIP In The Forests of Siberia by Sylvain Tesson ( published in english in march 2013) travelstory
"Sylvain Tesson found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin in the middle taiga, on the shores of Baikal, for six months. From February to July 2010, he lived in silence, solitude, and cold. His cabin, built by Soviet geologists in the Brezhnev years, is , six-day walk from the nearest village and hundreds of miles of track. Emotionally, these months proved a challenge, and the loneliness was crippling. A struggles to survive in a hostile nature with moments of ecstasy, inner peace and harmony with nature. Writer, journalist and traveler, Sylvain Tesson was born in 1972. After a world tour by bicycle, he developed a passion for Central Asia, and has travelled tirelessly since 1997". Nicely written in french...
January 11, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB Infinite Kung Fu by Kagan McLeod (2001) - graphic novel
Booklist (September 15, 2011 (Vol. 108, No. 2))
Originally self-published in 2000 and collected here for the first time—and including enough previously unseen pages to nearly double its size—McLeod’s genre-blending opus is not merely a kung fu epic. It’s a dystopian, zombie, kung fu epic. Lei Kung is a humble soldier until the eight immortals reveal that his destiny is to defeat their former students so that he may heal a world in which reincarnation has gone horribly wrong, and corpses rise to battle the living. Seldom has a creator’s love of a genre been as evident as in McLeod’s meticulous homage to the heyday of martial-arts cinema, replete with headstrong students, arduous training, gloating villains, and multiple styles of kung fu displayed in the most gloriously choreographed, multipage, martial-arts battles since Paul Gulacy defined the visual grammar of the form decades ago for Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu. Add heaping helpings of zombie gore, a well-imagined future world, and some gritty, street-style line work that suggests the 1970s, and the result is something irresistibly infectious—for those with special tastes. January 11, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB The dressmaker of Khair Khana : five sisters, one remarkable family, and the woman who risked everything to keep them safe by Tzemach Lemmon, Gayle (2011) - non-fiction
Booklist (February 1, 2011 (Vol. 107, No. 11))
Most books that cover women’s lives in Afghanistan under the Taliban recount suffering and loss, but journalist Lemmon wanted to shed light on the untold stories of enterprising women who found ways to take care of themselves and their families during the five oppressive years the Taliban was in power. Kamila Sidiqi’s hopes of using her teaching degree were dashed when the Taliban overtook Kabul and its suburbs. As the oldest unmarried daughter, Kamila knew it was up to her to find a way to provide for her family. Realizing women still need clothing to wear under their chadris, Kamila asked her older sister to teach her and her younger sisters to sew. With her younger brother in tow, Kamila approached local merchants and found buyers for the clothing she and her sisters made, until she found herself with a plethora of orders and a number of neighborhood women who wanted to take part in the business. An inspiring, uplifting story about one woman’s extraordinary courage and ingenuity in the face of adversity. January 10, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James - crime
Grades 9-12. If you pick up this book, it will be some time before you put your dog-eared, tear-stained copy back down. Wein succeeds on three fronts: historical verisimilitude, gut-wrenching mystery, and a first-person voice of such confidence and flair that the protagonist might become a classic character—if only we knew what to call her. Alternately dubbed Queenie, Eva, Katharina, Verity, or Julie depending on which double-agent operation she’s involved in, she pens her tale as a confession while strapped to a chair and recovering from the latest round of Gestapo torture. The Nazis want the codes that Julie memorized as a wireless operator before crash-landing in France, and she supplies them, but along the way also tells of her fierce friendship with Maddie, a British pilot whose quiet gumption was every bit as impressive as Julie’s brash fearlessness. Though delivered at knifepoint, Julie’s narrative is peppered with dark humor and minor acts of defiance, and the tension that builds up between both past and present story lines is practically unbearable. A surprise change of perspective hammers home the devastating final third of the book, which reveals that Julie was even more courageous than we believed. Both crushingly sad and hugely inspirational, this plausible, unsentimental novel will thoroughly move even the most cynical of readers.
Grades 9-12. The latest from Stiefvater, author of the Printz Honor Book The Scorpio Races (2011), defies easy synopsis. Consider that it is the story of 16-year-old Blue, from a family of psychics though she herself is not one. However, she does have the gift of amplifying others’ psychic experiences. Oh, and she has been told that if she kisses her true love, he will die. Then there are wealthy, handsome Gansey and his three friends, Adam, Ronan, and Noah, all of whom are “Raven Boys,” students at the prestigious Aglionby Academy. Gansey is obsessed with finding the body of the legendary sleeping king of Wales, Owen Glendower, using ley lines, invisible lines of energy that connect spiritual places. That a sinister someone else is also searching for the sleeping king adds chill-inducing danger to the complex and artful plot. Indeed, reading this novel is like walking through a tangled thicket and coming across one unexpected and wonderful surprise after another. In that respect, the book is marvelous, for not only is it filled with marvels but it is also a marvel of imagination and, more prosaically, structure. Rich, too, in characterization, this fantasy-mystery rises to the level of serious literature, leaving readers hungering for more. And more there will be, for this is the first volume of a planned quartet. Waiting for the next book in the Raven Cycle will indeed be a test of readers’ patience. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Stiefvater’s readership grows with each book she puts out, and the 150,000-copy first printing hints that this might be her biggest splash yet. January 10, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses by Ron Koertge (2012) - fairy tales
Booklist (June 1, 2012 (Vol. 108, No. 19))
Grades 10-12. Amputating the “happily” from “ever after,” Koertge’s collection of free-verse poems wrings 23 old favorites into terse puddles of queasiness, grim endings, and ambiguous moral takeaways (which, to be fair, means they’re not that far off from many of the originals). Not all the pieces land direct hits, but the best can be suggestively salacious, as when Cinderella’s stepsisters recall, from the grave, how “Even in tatters / Ella was desirable—a little thigh showing / here, some soot at her cleavage. And what / a tease—dashing away at midnight leaving / the heir to the throne groaning in his purple / tights.” Or they can be downright twisted, like when Bluebeard’s doomed bride discovers that she might just get off on being serial-killed or the vision of vengeful Hansel and Gretel, who don’t stop with the witch in the woods. Laden with entrails, revealed bone stumps, and bushels of decapitated heads, Dezsö’s distinctive cut-paper silhouettes are dripping with grotesquery but also beautiful in their own indelible fashion. And they’re a perfect match for Koertge’s gritty, druggy, sexed-up visions.
January 10, 2013 - Eileen H., Suzhou SIS Diviners by Libba Bray
"1920s New York thrums with giddy life in this gripping first in a new trilogy from Printz winner Bray. Irrepressible 17-year-old Evie delights in her banishment to her Uncle Will’s care in Manhattan after she drunkenly embarrasses a peer in her Ohio hometown. She envisions glamour, fun and flappers, but she gets a great deal more in the bargain. Her uncle, the curator of a museum of the occult, is soon tapped to help solve a string of grisly murders, and Evie, who has long concealed an ability to read people’s pasts while holding an object of their possession, is eager to assist. An impressively wide net is cast here, sprawling to include philosophical Uncle Will and his odd assistant, a numbers runner and poet who dreams of establishing himself among the stars of the Harlem Renaissance, a beautiful and mysterious dancer on the run from her past and her kind musician roommate, a slick-talking pickpocket, and Evie’s seemingly demure sidekick, Mabel. Added into the rotation of third-person narrators are the voices of those encountering a vicious, otherworldly serial killer; these are utterly terrifying. Not for the faint of heart due to both subject and length, but the intricate plot and magnificently imagined details of character, dialogue and setting take hold and don’t let go. Not to be missed. (Historical/paranormal thriller. 14 & up)" http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/libba-bray/diviners/
November 21, 2012 - Karen Gockley, ISB
Struck by Lightning. Chris Colfer. 2012
Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal follows the story of outcast high school senior Carson Phillips who blackmails the most popular students in his school into contributing to his literary journal to bolster his college application; his goal in life is to get into Northwestern and eventually become the editor of The New Yorker.
At once laugh-out-loud funny, deliciously dark, and remarkably smart, Struck By Lightning unearths the dirt that lies just below the surface of high school.
The film Stuck By Lightning is set to be released by Tribeca Film later this year and features Colfer's own original screenplay. Colfer also stars in the film alongside Allison Janney, Christina Hendricks, Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Hyland, and Polly Bergen. Never Fall Down. Patricia McCormick. 2012
Grades 9-12. McCormick, the acclaimed author of Sold (2006) and Purple Heart (2009), has now written a novel based on the life of Cambodian peace advocate Arn Chorn-Pond. The story begins with an 11-year-old Arn in 1975 in Battambang, Cambodia. The war between the government forces and the Khmer Rouge is remote until the day the Khmer Rouge arrive in his town and, taking all the children captive, march them into the countryside, where they become, essentially, slave laborers. Arn survives the killing fields through a combination of luck and musical ability. But his life changes again when Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia and, overnight, the boy is forced to become a Khmer Rouge soldier. He will eventually escape to Thailand and then to the U.S., but the four years of genocide in between are an unspeakable experience of suffering, torture, and death. This is not an easy book to read, as it unveils the truth about one of the most hideous examples of inhumanity in the twentieth or any other century. McCormick has done a remarkable job of creating an authentic first-person voice for Arn and using it to lay bare his almost unimaginable experiences of horror. The resulting book is powerfully, hauntingly unforgettable. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Significant media outreach will ensure that this book gets crossover attention from both teens and adults, who will be eager to see what’s next from this National Book Award finalist.
February 4th, 2013 - Cindy Colson Dulwich Beijing
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
TIME Magazine's #1 Fiction Book of 2012!
“The Fault in Our Starsis a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it's also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness." —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.
February 4th, 2013 - Cindy Colson Dulwich Beijing
Bumped, by Megan Cafferty:
In 2036 New Jersey, when teens are expected to become fanatically religious wives and mothers or high-priced Surrogettes for couples made infertile by a widespread virus, sixteen-year-old identical twins Melody and Harmony find in one another the courage to believe they have choices.
Booklist (May 15, 2011 (Vol. 107, No. 18))
Grades 9-12. After an inexplicable virus renders anyone 18 years and older infertile, “bumping,” the practice of arranging pregnancies with teen surrogates, becomes a big business. Sixteen-year-olds Melody and Harmony, identical twins separated at birth, couldn’t be more different from each other. Melody has one of the most talked about bumping contracts, but she is reluctant to fulfill it, even when her bumping agent arranges for a notoriously hot stud to impregnate her. Harmony, raised in the super-religious community of Goodside, is dead set on preventing Melody from “bumping” for profit, but she is also wrestling with conflicting thoughts about faith, love, and marriage. Like Julia Karr’s XVI (2011), Bumped has plenty to say about reproductive rights and girls’ place in society, but McCafferty’s touch is a bit lighter. McCafferty sometimes dodges terrifying truths, such as the implications of teens who sell their babies on an auction block, but she will likely develop these ethical and moral dilemmas in the planned sequel.February 4th, 2013 - Cindy Colson Dulwich Beijing
BZRK, by Michael Grant
Booklist starred (March 15, 2012 (Vol. 108, No. 14))
Grades 9-12. Grant, who showed a flair for grandiose conceptual gambits in his Gone series, here goes big by going small. With science as soft as pudding (though, really, who cares—pudding is delicious), he envisions nanotechnology so advanced that brains can be rewired, memories manipulated, and senses hacked by robots and gene-spliced creatures the size of dust mites. A war between two ultra-secretive, competing ideologies—one championing free will, the other promising enforced happiness—is being fought “down in the meat,” and Grant gleefully exposes the biological ickiness of the body going about its everyday business in paranoia-inducing scenes of nanobots scuttling across spongy brain matter or plunging probes into optic nerves. At the same time, he doles out eviscerating loads of violence on the macro level as two teens are enlisted to help stop a maniacal baddie and his team of “twitchers,” who are planning to infiltrate the heads of the world’s most powerful nations. With simmering pots of sexual tension, near-nonstop action, and the threat of howling madness or brain-melting doom around every corpuscular corner, Grant’s new series is off to a breathless, bombastic start. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Grant’s Gone novels have catapulted him into best-sellerdom, but he’s also one of the savvier explorers of multiplatform attention grabs. An elaborate assault of mobile gaming apps, tangential online stories and comics, and an array of other interactive content all extend his reach.1/24/2013- Karen G., ISB
A confusion of princes.
Booklist (February 15, 2012 (Vol. 108, No. 12))
Grades 8-11. There’s always the possibility for any prince to be chosen as emperor, but, in a vast empire of ten million biologically and mechanically augmented princes, Khemri discovers that—assassination attempts and imperial interference aside—life as a prince isn’t what he’d been led to believe. While on a secret mission to hone his skills and expand his knowledge, he meets Raine, a young woman who changes his perspective and, as a result, Khemri begins trying to fulfill his true potential. Aurealis Award–winning author Nix develops an empire conceptually reminiscent of the sf classic Dune (1965), with an emphasis on house loyalty and political machinations. He keeps the details fresh through use of sf tropes, employing them to explore big-picture issues like morality and ethics under the guise of a rousing space opera. Khemri’s first-person point of view, along with a fast-paced, action- and plot-driven story, is sure to appeal to fans of the Star Wars universe and any number of first-person shooter video games. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The latest from New York Times best-selling Nix is pubbing to some serious fanfare. Expect an author blog tour, a targeted Facebook ad campaign, a collectible poster, and more.January 24, 2013 Dominique LFIP
In The Forests of Siberia by Sylvain Tesson ( published in english in march 2013) travel story
"Sylvain Tesson found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin in the middle taiga, on the shores of Baikal, for six months. From February to July 2010, he lived in silence, solitude, and cold. His cabin, built by Soviet geologists in the Brezhnev years, is , six-day walk from the nearest village and hundreds of miles of track. Emotionally, these months proved a challenge, and the loneliness was crippling. A struggles to survive in a hostile nature with moments of ecstasy, inner peace and harmony with nature. Writer, journalist and traveler, Sylvain Tesson was born in 1972. After a world tour by bicycle, he developed a passion for Central Asia, and has travelled tirelessly since 1997". Nicely written in french...
January 11, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB
Infinite Kung Fu by Kagan McLeod (2001) - graphic novel
Booklist (September 15, 2011 (Vol. 108, No. 2))
Originally self-published in 2000 and collected here for the first time—and including enough previously unseen pages to nearly double its size—McLeod’s genre-blending opus is not merely a kung fu epic. It’s a dystopian, zombie, kung fu epic. Lei Kung is a humble soldier until the eight immortals reveal that his destiny is to defeat their former students so that he may heal a world in which reincarnation has gone horribly wrong, and corpses rise to battle the living. Seldom has a creator’s love of a genre been as evident as in McLeod’s meticulous homage to the heyday of martial-arts cinema, replete with headstrong students, arduous training, gloating villains, and multiple styles of kung fu displayed in the most gloriously choreographed, multipage, martial-arts battles since Paul Gulacy defined the visual grammar of the form decades ago for Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu. Add heaping helpings of zombie gore, a well-imagined future world, and some gritty, street-style line work that suggests the 1970s, and the result is something irresistibly infectious—for those with special tastes.January 11, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB
The dressmaker of Khair Khana : five sisters, one remarkable family, and the woman who risked everything to keep them safe by Tzemach Lemmon, Gayle (2011) - non-fiction
Booklist (February 1, 2011 (Vol. 107, No. 11))
Most books that cover women’s lives in Afghanistan under the Taliban recount suffering and loss, but journalist Lemmon wanted to shed light on the untold stories of enterprising women who found ways to take care of themselves and their families during the five oppressive years the Taliban was in power. Kamila Sidiqi’s hopes of using her teaching degree were dashed when the Taliban overtook Kabul and its suburbs. As the oldest unmarried daughter, Kamila knew it was up to her to find a way to provide for her family. Realizing women still need clothing to wear under their chadris, Kamila asked her older sister to teach her and her younger sisters to sew. With her younger brother in tow, Kamila approached local merchants and found buyers for the clothing she and her sisters made, until she found herself with a plethora of orders and a number of neighborhood women who wanted to take part in the business. An inspiring, uplifting story about one woman’s extraordinary courage and ingenuity in the face of adversity.
January 10, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB
Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James - crime
Publishers Weekly Annex (December 19, 2011)
Historical mystery buffs and Jane Austen fans alike will welcome this homage to the author of Pride and Prejudice from MWA Grand Master James, best known for her Adam Dalgliesh detective series (The Private Patient, etc.). In the autumn of 1803, six years after the events that closed Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Darcy, the happily married mistress of Pemberley House, is preparing for Lady Anne's annual ball, "regarded by the county as the most important social event of the year." Alas, the evening before the ball, Elizabeth's sister Lydia, who married the feckless Wickham, bursts into the house to announce that Captain Denny, a militia officer, has shot her husband dead in the woodland on the estate. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam, who purists may note behaves inconsistently with Austen's original, head out in a chaise to investigate. Attentive readers will eagerly seek out clues to the delightfully complex mystery, which involves many hidden motives and dark secrets, not least of them in the august Darcy family. In contrast to Pride and Prejudice, where emotion is typically conveyed through indirect speech, characters are much more open about their feelings, giving a contemporary ring to James's pleasing and agreeable sequel. 300,000 first printing. Agent: Carol Heaton, Greene & Heaton Ltd. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.January 10, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein - historical fiction
Booklist starred (May 1, 2012 (Vol. 108, No. 17))
Grades 9-12. If you pick up this book, it will be some time before you put your dog-eared, tear-stained copy back down. Wein succeeds on three fronts: historical verisimilitude, gut-wrenching mystery, and a first-person voice of such confidence and flair that the protagonist might become a classic character—if only we knew what to call her. Alternately dubbed Queenie, Eva, Katharina, Verity, or Julie depending on which double-agent operation she’s involved in, she pens her tale as a confession while strapped to a chair and recovering from the latest round of Gestapo torture. The Nazis want the codes that Julie memorized as a wireless operator before crash-landing in France, and she supplies them, but along the way also tells of her fierce friendship with Maddie, a British pilot whose quiet gumption was every bit as impressive as Julie’s brash fearlessness. Though delivered at knifepoint, Julie’s narrative is peppered with dark humor and minor acts of defiance, and the tension that builds up between both past and present story lines is practically unbearable. A surprise change of perspective hammers home the devastating final third of the book, which reveals that Julie was even more courageous than we believed. Both crushingly sad and hugely inspirational, this plausible, unsentimental novel will thoroughly move even the most cynical of readers.January 10, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (2012) - magic
Booklist starred (August 2012 (Vol. 108, No. 22)
Grades 9-12. The latest from Stiefvater, author of the Printz Honor Book The Scorpio Races (2011), defies easy synopsis. Consider that it is the story of 16-year-old Blue, from a family of psychics though she herself is not one. However, she does have the gift of amplifying others’ psychic experiences. Oh, and she has been told that if she kisses her true love, he will die. Then there are wealthy, handsome Gansey and his three friends, Adam, Ronan, and Noah, all of whom are “Raven Boys,” students at the prestigious Aglionby Academy. Gansey is obsessed with finding the body of the legendary sleeping king of Wales, Owen Glendower, using ley lines, invisible lines of energy that connect spiritual places. That a sinister someone else is also searching for the sleeping king adds chill-inducing danger to the complex and artful plot. Indeed, reading this novel is like walking through a tangled thicket and coming across one unexpected and wonderful surprise after another. In that respect, the book is marvelous, for not only is it filled with marvels but it is also a marvel of imagination and, more prosaically, structure. Rich, too, in characterization, this fantasy-mystery rises to the level of serious literature, leaving readers hungering for more. And more there will be, for this is the first volume of a planned quartet. Waiting for the next book in the Raven Cycle will indeed be a test of readers’ patience. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Stiefvater’s readership grows with each book she puts out, and the 150,000-copy first printing hints that this might be her biggest splash yet.January 10, 2013 - Nadine R. - ISB
Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses by Ron Koertge (2012) - fairy tales
Booklist (June 1, 2012 (Vol. 108, No. 19))
Grades 10-12. Amputating the “happily” from “ever after,” Koertge’s collection of free-verse poems wrings 23 old favorites into terse puddles of queasiness, grim endings, and ambiguous moral takeaways (which, to be fair, means they’re not that far off from many of the originals). Not all the pieces land direct hits, but the best can be suggestively salacious, as when Cinderella’s stepsisters recall, from the grave, how “Even in tatters / Ella was desirable—a little thigh showing / here, some soot at her cleavage. And what / a tease—dashing away at midnight leaving / the heir to the throne groaning in his purple / tights.” Or they can be downright twisted, like when Bluebeard’s doomed bride discovers that she might just get off on being serial-killed or the vision of vengeful Hansel and Gretel, who don’t stop with the witch in the woods. Laden with entrails, revealed bone stumps, and bushels of decapitated heads, Dezsö’s distinctive cut-paper silhouettes are dripping with grotesquery but also beautiful in their own indelible fashion. And they’re a perfect match for Koertge’s gritty, druggy, sexed-up visions.January 10, 2013 - Eileen H., Suzhou SIS
Diviners by Libba Bray
"1920s New York thrums with giddy life in this gripping first in a new trilogy from Printz winner Bray.
Irrepressible 17-year-old Evie delights in her banishment to her Uncle Will’s care in Manhattan after she drunkenly embarrasses a peer in her Ohio hometown. She envisions glamour, fun and flappers, but she gets a great deal more in the bargain. Her uncle, the curator of a museum of the occult, is soon tapped to help solve a string of grisly murders, and Evie, who has long concealed an ability to read people’s pasts while holding an object of their possession, is eager to assist. An impressively wide net is cast here, sprawling to include philosophical Uncle Will and his odd assistant, a numbers runner and poet who dreams of establishing himself among the stars of the Harlem Renaissance, a beautiful and mysterious dancer on the run from her past and her kind musician roommate, a slick-talking pickpocket, and Evie’s seemingly demure sidekick, Mabel. Added into the rotation of third-person narrators are the voices of those encountering a vicious, otherworldly serial killer; these are utterly terrifying.
Not for the faint of heart due to both subject and length, but the intricate plot and magnificently imagined details of character, dialogue and setting take hold and don’t let go. Not to be missed. (Historical/paranormal thriller. 14 & up)"
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/libba-bray/diviners/
November 21, 2012 - Karen Gockley, ISB
Struck by Lightning. Chris Colfer. 2012
Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal follows the story of outcast high school senior Carson Phillips who blackmails the most popular students in his school into contributing to his literary journal to bolster his college application; his goal in life is to get into Northwestern and eventually become the editor of The New Yorker.
At once laugh-out-loud funny, deliciously dark, and remarkably smart, Struck By Lightning unearths the dirt that lies just below the surface of high school.
The film Stuck By Lightning is set to be released by Tribeca Film later this year and features Colfer's own original screenplay. Colfer also stars in the film alongside Allison Janney, Christina Hendricks, Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Hyland, and Polly Bergen.
Never Fall Down. Patricia McCormick. 2012
Grades 9-12. McCormick, the acclaimed author of Sold (2006) and Purple Heart (2009), has now written a novel based on the life of Cambodian peace advocate Arn Chorn-Pond. The story begins with an 11-year-old Arn in 1975 in Battambang, Cambodia. The war between the government forces and the Khmer Rouge is remote until the day the Khmer Rouge arrive in his town and, taking all the children captive, march them into the countryside, where they become, essentially, slave laborers. Arn survives the killing fields through a combination of luck and musical ability. But his life changes again when Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia and, overnight, the boy is forced to become a Khmer Rouge soldier. He will eventually escape to Thailand and then to the U.S., but the four years of genocide in between are an unspeakable experience of suffering, torture, and death. This is not an easy book to read, as it unveils the truth about one of the most hideous examples of inhumanity in the twentieth or any other century. McCormick has done a remarkable job of creating an authentic first-person voice for Arn and using it to lay bare his almost unimaginable experiences of horror. The resulting book is powerfully, hauntingly unforgettable. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Significant media outreach will ensure that this book gets crossover attention from both teens and adults, who will be eager to see what’s next from this National Book Award finalist.